Throughout history mankind has evolved to a species that is far more evolved than others. I’m not saying we do the right thing or are that smart every time, but we have technology and made the world ‘smaller’ through infrastructure, the internet and the communication that it brings. We can speak to people everywhere in the world and from every country.

But let’s keep it simple for this article, let’s focus on Bootleggers. If we look at it, communication is what keeps it all together. Interaction with others is crucial to successfully play this game and actually like it. For some it sticks to asking people to OC. Others have conversations, and there’s even people talking in the Off Topic Forum about things that don’t have anything to do with this game. You could not reach a high rank with 0 messages send (yeah okay for those who want to prove a point, you can if you contact people in another way). Next to this standard stuff; you can’t run a crew the right way without proper communication. I for one have been in different crews throughout my bootlegging career and have been in some where I had no idea what was going on or what the plans were. It distances you from such a crew, eventually causing you to stop putting effort in it ending up in getting wiped without anyone working hard to build it up again.

Communication is crucial to keep the game and it’s features fun. I’ve interviewed a few players when working on this article and asked them why they play this game and keep coming back. Almost all the answers came down to the same thing: people/interaction. This game is not that complicated or hasn’t got these awesome graphics, it’s click-based for Christ sake. But still there’s people who have played it for 10 years. The difference between this and Grand Theft Auto for instance is the people. You’re constantly talking to your friends/crew and it makes it fun to kill time fucking around with people and achieving things with them. Some people even met Bootleggers friends in real life. I even spoke to someone who got their life-partner from Bootleggers!

The contradiction to me is pretty ironic. The thing that makes this game so popular and keeps people coming back is also the thing breaking the game and making people quit; COMMUNICATION.
‘BSF info please’, ‘BSF what’s going on with the crews’ and many more of these posts can be seen in the forums from time to time. The person that understood that a big part of this game needed to be interaction, is lacking in communication himself. The community (nice word isn’t it) doesn’t get updates on features, and we’ve seen in the past that communication within the staff isn’t that great either. This game could be so much bigger and way more popular if the creator would actually participate in the most important part of it; communication.

As time goes by though we’ve seen that even this doesn’t break the game. People complain a lot but keep playing. Will this change in the future? Will it reach a point where people get sick of it, or are the friendships that are made/ have been made here so important that this game will forever be popular? Do you think that even when BSF is too busy to work on features, that an update on why/how would improve public opinion and happiness? Or do you totally disagree with this article? Please discuss, and thanks for reading my brainfart!